Mammon and Co.

"Bayreuth, I should say," continued Mrs. Murchison without a pause. "Lily dearest, if you laugh like that you'll get a piece of crab in your windgall. Well, as I was saying, Lady Conybeare, it was all just too beautiful. You may be sure I studied the music a good deal before each opera; it is impossible to grasp it otherwise – the life-motive and all that. Siegfried Wagner conducted; they gave him quite an ovarium. But some people go just in order to say they have been, without thinking about the music. Garibaldi to the general, I call it."

Lady Conybeare, a fresh-faced, dark-eyed woman of not more than fifty, healthy as a sea-wind, and in her wholesome way as tyrannical, cast an appealing look at Toby. Toby was one of the few people who did not in the least fear her, and she was proportionately grateful. She had tried to spoil him as a child, and now depended on him. He had warned her what calls would be made on her gravity during Mrs. Murchison's visit, and she had promised to do her best.

"So few people appreciate Garibaldi," she said with emphatic sympathy.

"Yes it is so," said Mrs. Murchison, flying off at a tangent. "When I was a girl I used to adore him, and wore a photograph of him in a locket. But that is all gone out; it went out with plain living and high thinking;" and she helped herself for the second time to Toby's crab and drank a little excellent Moselle.

"But Bayreuth was very fatiguing," she went on; "or is it Beyrout? Until one has heard the operas once, it is a terrible effort of attention. C'est le premier fois qui coûte. Really, I felt quite exhausted at the end of the circle, and I was so glad to get back to dear, delightful, foggy old London again, where one never has to attend to anything. And it looked so beautiful this morning as I drove down the Embankment. I see they have put up a new statue at the corner of Westminster Bridge – Queen Casabianca, or some such person."

Toby choked suddenly and violently.

"I've said something wrong, I expect," remarked Mrs. Murchison genially. "Tell me what it is, Lord Evelyn, or I should say Lord Toby."

"Toby, please."

"Well, Toby – Dear me! how funny it sounds, considering I only saw you first in June! Ah, dear me, since first I saw your face, what a lot has happened! But if it's not Casabianca, who is it?"

"Boadicea, I think," said Toby.

"Dear me! so it is. How stupid of me! She comes in the Anglo-Saxon history, does she not? and she used to bleed beneath the Roman rods in the blue poetry book – or was it pink? I never can remember. But how it all comes back to one! Caractacus, too, and Alfred and the cakes, and the seven hills."

Mrs. Murchison beamed with happiness. She knew very well the difference between being a unit among a large house-party, and staying as an only guest, and this cottage by the sea seemed to her to be the very incarnation of the taste and culture of breeding. She knew also that several rich and aspiring acquaintances of hers were spending a week at Stanborough, and she proposed after lunch to stroll along the beach towards there, and perhaps call at the hotel on the links. Her friends were sure to ask where she was staying, and it would be charming to say:

"Oh, down at the cottage with Lady Conybeare. So delicious and rustic; there is no one there except Lily and dear Toby. Of course we are very happy about it. And don't you find a hotel quite intolerable?"

In the pause that followed Mrs. Murchison ran over her plans.

"What a charming place this is," she went on; "and how delightful to be near Stanborough! Lord Comber is there; he told me he was going on there from Beyrout. At the Links Hotel, I think he said."

Toby looked up.

"Is Comber there?" he asked. "Are you sure?"

His cheerful face had clouded, and his tone was peremptory.

"Of course I am sure," said Mrs. Murchison. "Dear me, how annoyed you look, Lord – I mean Toby. And I thought he was such a friend of your sister-in-law's and all. What is the matter?"

"Nothing – nothing at all," he said quickly.

But he looked at his mother and caught her eye.

"What a very odd place for Lord Comber to come to!" said Lily, who had grasped "watering-place" with greater distinctness than Mrs. Murchison.

"I am sure I don't see why," said she. "Stanborough is extremely bracing and fashionable. I saw they had quite a list of fashionable arrivals there in the World yesterday. Isn't it so, Toby?"

"Perhaps he has come to play golf," said Toby in a tone of resolute credulity.

"Golf?" asked Mrs. Murchison vaguely. "Oh, that's the game, isn't it, where you dig a sandpit, and then hit the ball into it and swear? So somebody told me. It sounds quite easy."

Toby laughed.

"A very accurate description," he said. "I'm going to play this afternoon. Hear me swear!"

Lady Conybeare rose, as they had finished lunch.

"Come and see me before you go out, Toby," she said.

Lily looked from one to the other, and saw the desire of a private word between them.

"Oh, mother, let me take you to the rose-garden!" she said. "Shall we have coffee there as usual, Lady Conybeare?"

"Yes, dear. Take your mother out."

The two left the room, and Lady Conybeare turned to Toby.

"Well, Toby," she said.

"I don't wish to be either indiscreet or absurd, mother," he answered.

"Nor I," said she. "Kit told me she was coming to Stanborough for a week, and I asked her, of course, to stay here. She said she had made arrangements to stay at the Links Hotel. Jack is not coming."

Toby made two bread pellets, and flicked them out of the window with extraordinary accuracy of aim.

"Damn Kit!" he said. "She comes to-morrow, and that beast, I suppose, came a day or two ago. I saw somebody in the distance the day before yesterday who reminded me of him, but I didn't give another thought to it. No doubt it was he."

There was a pause.

"But Jack – " said Lady Conybeare, and it cost her something to say it.

"Oh, Jack's a fool!" said Toby quickly. "You know that as well as I do, mother. Of course, he's awfully clever, and all that; but I'll be blowed if my wife ever stops at a seaside hotel with a Comber-man."

Lady Conybeare stretched out her hand.

"Thank God, I have you, Toby!" she said.

"What a fool Kit is!" said Toby thoughtfully. "There are hundreds of people there, as Mrs. Murchison says. Telegraph for Jack, mother," he said suddenly.

Lady Conybeare shook her head.

"We have no right, no reason to do that," she said. "Toby, take the thing in hand. Do your best."

Toby looked out of the window and hit an imaginary opponent with his closed fist.

"Perhaps we could manage something," he said. "Don't say a word to Lily, mother, or to Mrs. Murchison."

Lady Conybeare smiled rather bitterly.

"Nor wash my dirty linen in public," she said. "Is that my habit, dear?"